


Hold off the Earth Awhile

by captainjackspearow



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls II
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Compliant with Lucatiel's Questline, Existential Angst, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Fratricide, Lucatiel's a soldier guys how do you think she died the first time?, Memory Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Strained Sibling Dynamic, Twin Mirrah Siblings, because i think about it... constantly, but with a bonus bittersweet epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:54:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24081643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainjackspearow/pseuds/captainjackspearow
Summary: Lucatiel shakes her head, and then nods. “Yes, in a manner of speaking. And… then I came here… to…”(She came here to find him, Aslatiel or answers, to find a modicum of closure before being inevitably dragged under by the storm upon the horizon. To stare him down and demand he explain himself, else to shoulder the burden none will be able to bear for her, in the end, for there will be no one left to put Lucatiel to rest.)---Covers Lucatiel's questline, from beginning to end to slightly beyond. A knight's struggle to remember, to survive, to find what she cannot even say she seeks.
Relationships: The Bearer of the Curse/Lucatiel of Mirrah
Comments: 11
Kudos: 24





	Hold off the Earth Awhile

**Author's Note:**

> As someone who struggled with 2 years of developing aphasia, short-term memory loss, and thought-processing issues before we discovered the source, Lucatiel hits hard. Enjoy.

She’s not certain if the thick smell of rot is ubiquitous in Drangleic, a natural extension of the curse that pervades the land, or just something native to this dark and dismal port. The musty smell in the air – of too-long-wet fabric, of bloated, waterlogged, dead – clings to everything that as much as passes by.

It won’t be long before she smells like she belongs here.

But she will regardless, will she not? Her own flesh rots even still, for all that she refuses to look at the broken, blistered patch of her face. No matter how she seeks to deny it.

Aslatiel isn’t here. That much, she can grant herself. She’ll acknowledge that, at least.

It still makes little sense, to be sure. No Man’s Wharf is the most accessible port, of late, and she’s certain it was much the same, all that time ago. Rumors of the shantytown reached even bordering lands – a site for prisoners, the long-lingering dead, like some bizarre purgatory. If he truly came to Drangleic, it would make as much sense as anything to start her search here, among the dead and dying.

But there’s no trace of Aslatiel, no bright-eyed brother picking furiously through the remains of a building, nor any shambling corpse wandering mindlessly in all-too-familiar armor. Not even a still one, looted, bereft of all tokens of identity. She’s searched the entire port clear through.

She’s not sure if his absence lightens her heart or terrifies her all the more.

Because he’s not here, and neither is the wharf _truly_ a prison, just the rotting remains of an abandoned corral, full of the long-dead and the forgotten. Little more than a former ghetto, meant to contain-

-people like her, she thinks. But they’ve been left to rot in obsolescence, unremembered by a single soul, aimlessly seeking meaningless retribution for offenses they cannot remember.

She shudders at the realization that this is the reality of the afterlife she’s chosen. The little life she has left.

Best to move on, for both their sakes. Somewhere further inland, away from the uncomfortably damp sea-breeze and uncanny cold. Perhaps a place less haunting, if she’s lucky.

Somewhere further down the winding streets, something snaps the dead calm of the wharf like a twig. They’re at it again, down there – she’s learned to pick out the low moans that bloated bodies make when they exert themselves beyond what’s wise from the eerie whistling of the air between ramshackle buildings. The sound of metal against leather, against skin, the wet cut of a blade that once spelled death, the deep growl of a feral dog, silenced without even a yelp.

All-too-quick footfalls wading through the shallows. Down by the dock, not but a block away, then.

It doesn’t take long for the sound to fade, the splashing to stop with one final heavy weight making its entrance into the muck. All grows still again.

Or, she thought it did, till the dim light of the hovel she’s holed up in reveals a shadowed figure at the end of the street, hand over what she assumes is a sword-belt on their hip as they stare further up the hill. The quiet sound of metal-on-metal – the scraping, the gentle clatter of mail – is reminiscent of heavy armor, and that alone catches Lucatiel’s attention, for this must be an outsider: someone who’s still sane enough to recognize the value of stealth, at the very least.

She should not be excited. Like enough as anything, it’s the seeker of the sign, here to do his job at last. Some bleak and broken thing, mindless in the darkness but for a single, unforgettable purpose.

She forces herself to swallow the thought, to fiddle with the left edge of her mask, the positioning of the sculpted metal over the rough skin beneath it, should, perhaps, she pass for something...

…other than what she is, she supposes. A condemned woman.

As the figure steps into the edge of the light, however, momentary fears give way to tentative intrigue. The soft glow of a torch reflects off of the knight’s gold heraldry, illuminates the stained blue fabric of her tabard.

_Astoran,_ she thinks, and for some reason the thought burns within her with a vigor that she tries desperately to quell. Perhaps it should be enough to know she’s not the only outsider in this teeming, lonely land, but the thought is poisoned by a voice she cannot ignore, one that knows it would be far better if she was.

The knight speaks not, so Lucatiel clears her own throat, breaks the disquieting silence that’s once again settled over the port, over the broken, dismal apartment. “Listen,” she says, firmly, “I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. And things are better that way.”

It is enough, after all. To simply _know:_ that the other exists, that they are not the only ones with a foot still out of an unquiet grave.

The figure before her holds both hands up briefly in a show of peace, then slowly unfastens and lifts her helm. The face before her can’t be older than thirties, she thinks, more likely younger, but strangely enough, it’s unmarred in all the ways that matter. A faded scar across a cheek and a once-broken nose is nothing she could not find among the barracks of Mirrah.

She cannot say the same for herself.

The woman was almost undoubtedly a knight – Lucatiel can read it in the lines of her posture, the formality of her movements, the practical style of tightly-bound braids, tied up in a milkmaid’s crown. Her confusion at Lucatiel’s insistence is evident in her expression, but strangely – _naively,_ she thinks – she doesn’t protest.

Perhaps it isn’t confusion at all. Perhaps it’s just skepticism.

But she will not budge herself. Her own face stays firmly covered.

“To be honest, I’d prefer you call me Ahlai, before you come up with some vaguely-insulting nickname, or merely default to ‘Cursebearer’ or some bloody other thing like that.” The knight trails off, and then presses her lips together. “Apologies. I’ve had some strange encounters, of late. Ahlai, formerly of Astora, now of nothing.”

There are no spoken questions about the mask. Merely disregard for her own insistence that perhaps they go their separate ways without risking unpleasantness.

Lucatiel isn’t certain if she’s more grateful or unnerved by it, actually. Is she truly so trusting? It’d be impossible for her to remain so relaxed, so accepting, and to have survived thus far. And if she truly is as calm as she seems, how has she made it to this wretched port with her sanity intact? Plenty of unsavory hollows dwell among these parts, just sane enough to scam their fellow men.

She raises an eyebrow, and curses internally when she realizes the other woman – Ahlai – cannot see her face beneath the metal. “You know, perhaps your fellow encounters aren’t so far off about you being a touch odd. Normally, people keep a safe distance when they see this mask. But you,” she pauses, voice catching, “Apologies. I am called Lucatiel. Of Mirrah, to the far east – of both here and Astora.”

Ahlai takes a tentative seat on one of the less-unfortunate chairs in the place. It’s a miracle the half-broken thing manages to support the weight of her armor, and another altogether that the woman actually considers attempting the prospect to be worthwhile. “What brings you to Drangleic, then, Lucatiel of Mirrah?”

“They say,” she responds, carefully, “that Drangleic brims with powerful souls.”

It’s true, for even she’s heard the rumors. The crumbling kingdom is an attraction for the power-hungry and the desperate alike. Let the knight make her assumptions, for the truth is far more complicated.

It is no untruth to lead the woman’s thoughts thus, after all. Aslatiel’s soul, should he still possess it, surely burns bright.

(And if she’s unable to find it firmly where it belongs, she’ll pry it from the cold, dead hands of the bastard who’d dare take it from him.)

“I have come,” she continues, carefully, “to claim my share, so it were. But this is… even the rumors did not prepare me for the strange reality of this place.”

Ahlai nods, wiping grimly at something smeared across her lower cheek with the edge of her arming doublet. It must have splashed through the helmet, back by the docks, she assumes.

A moment passes in oddly comfortable silence before the other knight softly breaks it. “You speak the truth – Drangleic is full of strange faces and circumstances alike.” She rests the hilt of her sword against the broken wood of the table at her side, and Lucatiel cannot help but stare at the point of it, casually dug into the dirt floor rather than hilted or at the ready. “Soul-hungry priestesses and relentless knights. Crumbling cathedrals. Ancient battlefields full of long-dead soldiers, risen to once more hack away at the now-still corpses at their feet, unable to care or realize that their one-time victims can no longer raise a hand against them.”

No mention of a purpose, though the woman must clearly have one, to be of such sound mind despite her position. But she’s pried no further into Lucatiel’s business, much to her own relief, and as such, she’d not presume to intrude. Still-

“You are an odd one, indeed, I feel.” The words slip out before she can stop them, because the knight truly is the strangest thing she’s encountered amidst this pitiful dock slum. “I’ve always made a point of avoiding people here-”

“Sometimes,” Ahlai nods, interrupting, “that’s for the best, given everything, but-”

“-while you’ve made a point of engaging me.” The wordless question, once voiced, is beyond apparent. It lingers in the air, uncomfortable and exigent, like the omnipresent smell of sewage and rot.

“You looked reasonably sane.” Her voice, while level, is touched with a familiar brand of loneliness.

Lucatiel shakes her head, sighing, because as much as she might permit herself to feel a sliver of such longing, she’s never had a death wish. “You couldn’t have known that.”

“Sane enough to be cautious,” the woman continues, a note contrary. “Does it much matter, if I intended not to harm you, and merely to inquire as to your name and purpose? I’ve had few opportunities to speak to others since,” she swallows, brow furrowing, “since making my way hence. The path through Drangleic is lonely indeed when so few souls reside firmly in their original persons.”

The knight cannot see her expressions, firmly hidden behind the mask as they are, so there’s no need to attempt to conceal the skepticism on her face. “What if I’d intended to harm _you?_ ”

“It would have been regrettable, since I know now you’re capable,” Ahlai pauses, cracking a small smile, and such speech and expression is strangely unsettling, for she can feel her cheeks flush in confusion or embarrassment or something else altogether, for honestly, it’s been months since she’s heard another’s voice, so to carry on with complimentary conversation is-

-not what she’s used to, perhaps.

“Of speech,” the knight continues, “and you possess a certain air of mystery that will provide me plenty of diversion on the long road ahead. But, that said, I’m… difficult to kill.” Her tone, though bright, is accompanied by a strange darkness behind the eyes at the words. A far-off echo of something dead and unexpectedly cold. “So while I thank you for your concern in that regard, it’s unnecessary.”

Lucatiel snorts, and she can see Ahlai’s eyes crinkle warmly at the seemingly light reception of what she is certain was only said half in jest. “Perhaps you should value your life with more care in the future, then. Regardless,” she continues, “I can see that you are mid-journey.”

Ahlai nods, grateful for the change in subject. “Have you managed to catch sight of any sea-ready ships in the harbor? I’ve heard tales of a fairly large undead prison to the southeast, home to a..” She trails off. “Some fool sinner, apparently. Failed to set the world ablaze.”

Lucatiel shrugs. “There’s an old prison transport, I believe, just on the other side of the docks. I doubt it runs these days, though. Too many undead around here for that to be the case. The gaolers must have given up on herding them all to the island.”

The knight tilts her head, confused. “Strange. Well, I should be off, then,” she says, moving to rise, to turn away, to-

“Wait.”

The word surprises her as soon as it leaves her throat, but she swallows the voice whispering in her ear, because this is purely practical, not born of loneliness. They both seek the bastille, and she knows these docks well, for she’s spent weeks sifting through the murky silt for a familiar scrap of metal.

(She cannot deny the passing strange desire to leave, mayhap, a mark– if only for a little while. There is no Lucatiel back in Mirrah to mourn her, _remember_ her, should she vanish amidst the horrors here without a trace, as Aslatiel did. That much, perhaps, is allowable.)

“I can see that you are mid-journey: if you require assistance reaching the bastille, I will help you.”

Ahlai turns to her, rising in turn, with a mixture of intrigue and practiced deference. “I would not presume to impose upon you, Miss Lucatiel.”

“Ser,” she says, swallowing a lump in her throat. “Ser Lucatiel. Mirrah is a land of knights, and I was one, once. As such, my sword is always ready.”

The knight looks her over with a strange skepticism at such a quick change in tone. “Do you not make a point of avoiding people? Would such an action not put you at risk?”

“I do,” Lucatiel confesses, gripping the familiar hilt of her blade as she rises from the wall, “but I seek the bastille myself, for reasons of my own. Besides,” she says gently shaking her head softly as she points down the street, slipping into the darkness of the wharf, “you should not hesitate to call upon me for merely the fear something ill might befall me. Whatever happen – _should_ something happen – I won’t be missed.”

As they head out into the dark and winding streets, she almost misses the grim expression on the knight's face.

Almost.

***

They’ve always said the prison warden exists to punish the Undead.

As it swings twinned blades at the pair of them, working in distorted harmony, she can only think of twinned bladesmen, a pair of sharper swords against the world. A hand at her back. A shield at her side.

But the woman isn’t him, and there is no twinned soul joined to hers in this flooding ship, not in the murky water that reeks of fresh blood and old rot and stagnant salt.

They make quick work of it, though. The twisted creature falls. The fight ends.

But Aslatiel is still missing, and the reminder burns heavy in her chest, in the back of her tired lungs, along the edges of the dark mark curling around her sternum.

The ship sails of its own ghostly accord, as if it knows precisely where to go, like it can smell the curse upon its unwitting passengers. The cold stone spires of the Lost Bastille rise slowly in the distance as she watches, leaning against the rails.

The air should smell cleaner on the open water, she thinks. Perhaps all the rot of the wharf tainted the ship, or the mildew and the constant proximity to death saturated the fabric of her surcoat.

Or maybe the smell is coming from her.

She shudders.

There is the sound of shuffling to her side as the knight – Ahlai, she remembers, both hating and desperate for the fact of it, because there’s no _reason_ to remember this woman’s name, but she _can_ for the time being and that alone proves she’s not as far gone as she fears – rests against the creaky wood of the ship, staring off into the distance.

They don’t speak for most of the journey. She’s content to watch the waves roll against the rotting beams of the hull, to watch the storm clouds gather above the open water, to feel the cold brush of the sea-spray on her closed eyelids. To secretly relish in the cold change of sensation as it dampens the leather lining the metal on her face.

In fact, they wouldn’t have spoken at all, if not for the Astoran’s strange attempt at politeness, offering to bandage a wound on her arm. A laceration left by the creature’s mace.

She shrugs the gesture off, shaking her head. “Leave it. It’ll fix itself, in time.”

She half expects the woman to protest, to cling to some preposterous semblance of propriety, the same ridiculous notions of chivalry she left behind in the desert, or else to stare wide-eyed and question how an injury enough to wet her sleeve with blood could possibly not hurt.

She does not expect the woman to nod softly and turn back towards the sea, and say, “I wonder if it would be easier to be like the others.”

“Others?”

“Hollow.”

The word lingers in the air for a moment like the smell of the ship: uncomfortable, but not easily ignored.

“They’re free from the burden of having to feel. But we,” Ahlai continues, exhaustion lacing every measured word, “we feel every death, perhaps in some cases as keenly as the first.”

“What was your first?” Lucatiel interjects, desperate to steer the conversation elsewhere. “Can’t be worse than sloppy swordsmanship.”

“Poison,” she says, grimacing, “though your swordsmanship, as far as I’ve seen, is anything _but_ sloppy.”

The haunted expression on the woman’s face feels achingly familiar, and they’re content to leave the conversation at that, as the ship turns to pull into a pitch-black cove. The storm-battered walls tower far above them, atop the jagged crags of the island prison.

They leave each other at that as well, for they each seek different things amidst the ruin; the one who spoke of a person leaves in search of a soul, while the one who spoke of souls, a person.

***

She finds no familiar prisoner in the Lost Bastille.

No wayward hollow here who wears his armor, bears his sword. But there are plenty of them crawling along the battlements, lingering alone in once-crowded cells.

If, by some miracle, Aslatiel yet lives, she wonders, shoving a corpse aside with a bloodied boot, is this how he’ll find her? Some mindless, wandering monster incapable of recognizing what’s in front of her?

Will he, as she fears, run her tired corpse through with a blade, incapable of knowing?

Will he have only her clothes as a sign that she’s more than any other rotting body that crawls along the earth of this wretched kingdom?

The door of the battlements’ watchtower creaks open and she flinches out of her thoughts, grabbing and drawing her blade in an instant, but it is not the next mindless hollow seeking the soul it’s long lacked.

The same damned woman wanders in, smiles warmly to greet her, and it’s frustratingly wonderful even as it hurts, because – and it aches to even acknowledge it – it’s been _years_ , _longer even, maybe,_ since she last saw the face of a person who knew who she was, who said more than two words to her beyond the passing courtesy of a stranger.

But it twists the knife in deeper all the same. She can’t afford to linger in any recognition. It’ll just make the loss more painful, in the end.

“You haven’t changed a bit, have you?” It’s true. The knight – _Ahlai_ – is as unabashed in her entrance as ever, paying no regard for her own safety, and Lucatiel, she knows, honestly should have been paying more attention, for she could have probably heard the sound of her chainmail as she made her way across the battlements from the way she burst through the door. “I thought it might be you.”

“I thought it might be you, as well! The rest…” she breaks off, waving a hand half-heartedly in thought. “…everything else around here is far from silent. An empty tower, though, is just where I’d expect to find a quiet knight like you.”

Lucatiel eyes her skeptically, then remembers that, as ever, the woman cannot see her face. “You first found me in the crumbling home of a long-dead hollow.”

“But,” Ahlai counters, matter-of-fact, “you were the only creature smart enough to keep quiet when I wandered through without a care for attracting attention.”

She cannot keep the strange amusement fully out of her voice. “So you admit it, then, that your… style, shall we say, is needlessly reckless?”

Ahlai shrugs. “I admit that it usually draws anything seeking to kill me towards me. And then, it either kills me or I kill it, and the problem is solved.” Point made, the knight approaches her and slumps against the wall at Lucatiel’s side, turned just enough towards her to give her a quick, thoughtful once-over. “Any success at finding what you sought?”

She looks tired. Her eyes bear dark shadows, and her expression is familiar in its weary acceptance.

Lucatiel shakes her head and joins the other knight on the floor. “The longer I am here, the more madness I discover.”

“Tell me about it.”

It’s the spent look in her eyes, the sympathetic tone, perhaps, that does it in the end. But perhaps the thing she found earlier merely burned a painful and unwelcome hole in her pocket, and it was nothing other than an overwhelming desire to be _rid_ of the thing that pushed her to-

_Something_ , in that moment, does it, because before she even understands why, Lucatiel finds herself all but scrambling for it, pulling the tiny dark thing from her pocket with all the restraint she can manage, and holding it out insistently to the other woman.

She just stares – first at Lucatiel’s gloved hand, the _thing,_ and then at her still-masked face, as if she could hope to read her in spite of the metal plate for effort alone.

Her voice cracks at first when she speaks again, for the explanation to come is all but dread-inspiring. “I never thanked you for humoring me the other day.”

“Humoring you?” There is apprehension on her face – confusion, too – but no judgement, for which Lucatiel is thankful, and she does not press, does not demand an explanation, for which Lucatiel is _more_ thankful.

“In spite of my… perhaps cynical… else, overly cutting, first judgement. This is for you. I pray that it can make amends for my earlier harshness.”

_Take it,_ she thinks. _I cannot stand its presence a moment longer, whatever it may be, and perhaps it might be of more use to you than this empty gesture._

“Why would you give…” Ahlai trails off, uncertain, before continuing, “something like this to me?”

She can feel her cheeks flush with embarrassment. It’s clearly been too long since she’s spoken with another for her to have hoped to explain herself without inviting further questions. “Of course,” Lucatiel admits, “I’ve no idea what it is. But I hope it is of use to you, regardless, for it is of none to me. Please,” she insists, “let us speak no more of it.”

The knight stares at her with an expression of concern that unnerves her, like suddenly something makes more sense. But, when prompted again, she tentatively takes the gift, tucking it into a pouch at her hip.

Just as well, then. She’d prefer not to look at it too closely, nor to watch the woman’s face when _she_ does. It’d only invite more questions.

“You seem put together, despite the dismal circumstances of this place.”

To assume she’s such seems beyond strange to Lucatiel, for she doesn’t remotely feel it. Nonetheless, it’s at least a welcome change of subject.

“It’s a wretched place indeed, but our land of Mirrah is surrounded by enemies, so constantly at war.”

“Our?” Ahlai’s expression shifts with piqued interest at her words, and she quickly deflects from that line of conversation.

“There’s truly only one way up in Mirrah,” Lucatiel says, with a quick prayer that such matters are of far more interest to the other woman, “and it’s joining the Order and proving yourself in battle. My family had little fortune, and no name, so I had to carve out a piece of the world for myself with my sword and loyalty to my Lord.”

It’s not a lie. It’s simple omission, for she doesn’t want to explain-

-Aslatiel? The aching hole in her heart that’s been there ever since they never brought back a body-

( _The fear of failure, of forgetting, of what she’ll even find if she doesn’t._ )

“A knight, then?” Ahlai’s words snap her back to the moment, as well as the strangeness of an _Astoran,_ of all people, viewing knighthood as anything other than merely mundane.

“Are you not one?” She was under the impression the woman was. Certainly, her manner – not to mention her garb – suggested she’d not be out of place in Mirrah’s barracks, relatively speaking.

“Technically,” Ahlai says softly, “I was more retainer than knight. But I did train with the Astoran military in my younger years. Only thing to do when you’ve no trade, nor family, unless you’d prefer to serve the church. Not too different from your experience, from what you’ve said.”

“And you left to serve a lord?” It’s an interesting prospect, a country where a sword-oath to country and lord is not one and the same. Astora has not seen war in many years, she knows. Mirrah is different, that way.

There’s a long pause before Ahlai responds. “A lady,” she says, quietly.

“Hopefully a good one,” she says, for many aren’t, in Mirrah. Astora cannot be so different from it in this.

Ahlai nods, lips pressed together just enough to notice. “She was. And then she wasn’t, because of a terrible one. Lord, I mean. Not lady.” She shrugs bitterly. “Anyway, then I came here, to figure out how to fix all this.”

Lucatiel raises an eyebrow. “I’d wish you luck, but I’m not certain where one would even start with that.”

“Apparently,” she says, somewhat bemused, “by surviving long enough to hunt down the old monarch and ask him why this is all happening. That’s the best suggestion I’ve been given, thus far, anyway.”

“Do you truly think a king whose kingdom now lies in this state of ruin could possibly be of any help?”

Ahlai shrugs. “It’s the only lead I have to go on, really. Besides, they say his brother studied the soul of man, along with what caused it to hollow. I almost wonder if he might be responsible, in part.”

“Who makes such claims?” she asks. “I’ve not heard rumors of that sort.”

“Strange cats and sorcerers who think their intelligence far above my own, despite multiple well-timed rescues. Hence, my appreciation of your company, for you’re,” Ahlai trails off for a moment, gesturing blindly. “You’re not here to sell miracles for souls, or to watch the world burn, or to stand solemnly around a fire and dispense vague and cryptic advice.”

“None of that for me, no. I was raised to wield a sword practically from birth. Life was hard, but I never gave it a second thought.” They seem silly now, the hardships of the past. If she could turn the clock back to when her greatest concern was her next meal, it would be no choice at all.

“Do you give it second thoughts now?”

“It’s… difficult to say,” Lucatiel answers, after a moment. “On one hand, I had swift success on the battlefield, and quickly attained respectable stature, so that much was worth it. But on the other hand, it was… and then I…”

She inhales deeply, uncertain how to proceed, whether it’s even worth bringing up such matters. There’s little point in lingering in regrets any more than necessary. Ahlai nods, as if she could _possibly_ understand, and says, “then the lapse in swordwork, I assume?”

Lucatiel shakes her head, and then nods. “Yes, in a manner of speaking. And… then I came here… to…”

She came here to find him, Aslatiel or answers, to find a modicum of closure before being inevitably dragged under by the storm upon the horizon. To stare him down and demand he explain himself, else to shoulder the burden none will be able to bear for her, in the end, for there will be no one left to put Lucatiel to rest-

“You’ve heard of the Undead, undoubtedly,” she finally says, unable to keep the frustration out of her voice. “How they gradually lose their humanity to the curse, until their wits degrade completely… and how, finally, they turn Hollow and prey upon others.”

Ahlai nods, very slowly, and Lucatiel wants to bite her own tongue. Of course she would know.

“A Hollow can never be human again. Such a fate, cruel as it is, can only be skirted with the help of the souls found here.” The words burn in her throat as she speaks them. “That’s assuming, of course, that the legends are true. I can only hope that they are.”

It’s a blatant lie, and she knows it, just folk tales and tavern-speak to explain why the curse’s victims seek the souls of others endlessly in some fool bid to reclaim their own lost identities.

There’s no hope for a hollow, and the constant, nagging reminder of her fate that the easiest sources of souls provide is, Lucatiel thinks, far more likely to send her further down the line of deterioration than stave it off. She’d have to be a fool to expect otherwise.

There’s no hope for her, and there’s no hope for Aslatiel, if he’s here.

( _Still here,_ she thinks. _If he’s **still** here._)

She just wants to know what happened to him before she falls victim to her inevitable fate, because maybe…

… maybe Aslatiel solved a problem himself, for once in his life, rather than leaving it to another.

***

Here’s why Lucatiel was so insistent the other knight accept her gift:

The small dark shape was tucked into the pockets of a corpse she had searched for… something. Anything, to be honest, like all the corpses whose pockets she dug through – a familiar scrap of cloth, even. The thing was warm, like a shadow on a hot summer’s day. Like some child’s toy left beneath a sprawling desert smoke-tree.

A doll, of sorts. Worn down with age to a mere head and torso – a strange and vague construction, in its own right, however, that at first defied every shape her mind might make of it. But as she stared, the less formless it became.

A slender neck. A miniature navy surcoat. Dusty, braided hair.

A face.

The scrap of cloth upon the thing became more and more familiar each passing moment her eyes lingered upon it, but there was no mistaking the face, once it was clear enough to mark the individual features.

Cold, glassy eyes. A dead blue-grey, like the pale fog reflecting off of the sea around the Bastille.

There is no mistaking Aslatiel’s face, though it’s been years since she last laid eyes upon it.

It could have been centuries, and there would still be no mistaking it. His face is not so far from her own, after all.

It does not _stop,_ either. Dropping it distorted the uncanny effect for a moment, but even several feet away, her twin’s features once more emerged from the momentary darkness. It did not matter how long she spent looking elsewhere, does not matter that she desperately refocused, straining again and again in vain to see something else in the darkness within it, does not matter that the thing would shift and twist each time she found herself drawn to it.

It always settled on him. A pained attempt at a half-smile. Tired eyes.

Alive.

Was it the last expression she saw him make?

She could not – _can_ not – deal with the nagging feeling that she’s losing her mind at last, that this is how it goes, that she’d be seeing his face on the broken corpses of hollows come sunrise, because it’s _not_ him, is it? It’s just some hexed, broken thing, a stupid scrap of _something_ that her mind has clung to despite any and all screaming protests, and she refuses to indulge in it, so she'd tucked it away without permitting any second thoughts, vowing to rid herself of the damn thing the first chance she gets.

She cannot afford to let herself linger in hallucinated reminiscence. There would be very little Lucatiel left, after that.

***

She’s not certain why she follows Ahlai through the Bastille, to the crumbling, solitary tower that stands looming above the rest of the ramparts. Sinners’ Rise, she soon comes to understand, is not a tower but a _cell._ One meant to contain something within the Bastille’s greatest depths, behind chains and lifts and three separate dead-bolted gates.

The woman at the center of it all is… not what she expected.

Or perhaps it is her soul.

Ahlai cradles it close, after all is said and done, and Lucatiel should be relieved herself, but all she feels is unsettled, like she wants the stone beneath the Bastille to crack and split where the woman’s blade slammed into it but a moment before and to draw her into its very depths, for the earth to reclaim her in its entirety, because something about this soul called to her.

_Resonated_ , she thinks.

Perhaps it was that sensation of regret. The desperation she could feel emanating from it even but five feet yonder. That she, too, sought something she never found, once.

She shakes the thought from her head. More likely, it was the uncomfortable notion of continuing, in perpetuity, to be driven by one’s failures to such an extent even after hollowing.

The possibility that there will be no peace in the terrifying oblivion to come.

***

The world is beginning to cease to make sense to her, growing hazy at the edges of her vision.

Though, perhaps, it could be the fumes.

Another once proud kingdom reduced to septic rubble. Will Mirrah fall the same way, in the end? Will the sands reclaim it, in time, pouring into once-great knight halls for some far-off traveler to trudge through, wondering?

Or perhaps none will walk the ruins of its streets, when it’s gone. Or, if they do, they will not know where they are, neither what became of the country’s inhabitants nor why the stones crumble beneath their fingertips instead of housing legions. Kingdoms are as forgotten, in time, as people, no matter how hard their leaders might cling to their legacies.

This is a little better: this empty, barren antechamber in what surely must have once been a palace. It’s no prison, no desolate wharf: just a hallway flooded with fouled water and vats of acrid solutions. It’s far easier here ( _and now_ , she thinks) to pretend that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach is just from the poison.

There’s a face, there – a familiar one. _Shieldbrother,_ her mind supplies, almost helpfully.

The name is on the tip of her tongue, she knows it. She’ll find it at some point. Best to just nod, beckon her over, start talking before the woman before she notes the lack of proper address.

“Still on the road, are you?” The fumes from the hallway beyond burn her throat as she speaks, and though the sensation is uncomfortable, it’s oddly comforting all the same.

The woman nods. Her armor’s different, this time. Wasn’t it blue before?

Perhaps she’s just thinking of her own – it’s probably not safe to comment on it. But the woman’s timing, while bad as far as memory, is far better for her own desire to foster goodwill.

The ring she found in the ruins of this place is cold steel, with a well armored knight etched into the finger plate. The design is as practical as its purpose, something she feels the other women might appreciate, though that, of course, is but an assumption.

It is, only in part, given by way of apology.

To be honest, she hands it over in part because she wants the woman to like her, because she’s been both more and less scared in the weeks (or has it been months? _Days,_ she thinks, for a terrifying moment – _it could have been mere days, and there’s no way to be certain_ ) since their paths first crossed in a similarly damp and desolate place than she’s been since she left Mirrah.

But mostly, because she knows the woman will get more use out of it than she will, because between the two of them, there’s little humanity to be left, soon. In all likelihood, this woman will outlive her, so perhaps this will spare her a death. Perhaps it’ll keep her from rotting so quickly.

(How is she… thus? How still so human, even after what feels like both a century and a minute? How recent was her first death? How many must she have _killed_?)

Someone left behind to find Aslatiel, if she can’t. The thought that someone might find him, if she fails, is worth foolish generosity.

The idea that in the end, someone will know what happened to them both.

A voice jolts her out of her thoughts. “While such a gift is beyond appreciated, I have had many burdens placed upon me in Drangleic, but I must assure you that your presence is certainly not one of them.”

It’s an amusing idea, to be certain. Knowledge of one’s fate is as much a burden as an opportunistic miscreant or unwelcome associate.

But the knight (her name starts with an A too, she knows it, it’s but on the tip of her tongue) sits beside her on the cracked stone floor, turns to stare at Lucatiel’s mask for what feels like the first time, though a part of her distantly knows her gaze goes deeper than mere metal. Her expression is a weary one, eyes just a touch short of desperate, but restrained by their bearer to merely… searching.

If she didn’t know better, she’d call it concern.

(She does, though. It’s _fear_ , and the idea of where it’s directed strikes fear true into her own heart in turn.)

“You seem out of sorts, Lucatiel. Drangleic weighs heavy upon you, does it not?”

She nods. “I’ve found my thoughts growing hazy. Memories, too – I can feel them fading, the oldest first, but then…” she pauses, swallowing. “The curse is doing its work upon me.”

“Sometimes I feel as if this place seeks to rewrite us into its inhabitants. Take the people we were and cast all memory of them into darkness.”

She must have been silent for longer than she thought, for the other woman, biting her lip, breaks the quiet once more. “If you would speak not of the matter, there is no need to-”

Lucatiel shakes her head. “I am… Not speaking about it will not change the matter. I’m frightened. Terribly so. And it’s as you say – if everything should fade, then… do you not ever wonder what will be left of you, if even you cannot recall who you once were?”

There is, strangely, none of the apprehension she can feel clawing at her own gut in the other woman’s expression. “No. I know there will be nothing left of me. I made my peace with that when I died.”

“I should clarify,” the woman amends, after a moment,” I was not at peace when I died, of course, but the idea of being forgotten does not shake me so deeply, for when I _did_ die, that first time, my mind was far more preoccupied with other… questions, perhaps. Other newly realized horrors.”

“I know not whether to envy or pity you,” Lucatiel finds herself saying, because it’s the truth.

“We would not be human if we did not feel both, I suspect. But the idea of being forgotten weighs heavily upon you, does it not?”

She nods. There is not much more to say to that.

“If it helps,” the knight says, “I shall strive to remember you for as long as possible. But I do not intend to surrender myself to the darkness just yet, until it can be done properly.”

A curious notion, to die properly. Is that it, then: the difference between the pair of them? As Lucatiel fears false death, does she in turn take drive in pursuit of a truer kind?

But, of course, to be forgotten is not entirely the weight of her inevitable loss.

“It’s not merely that.”

“If not that, then what?”

She can feel her nails dig into the fraying end of the leather strap that binds the hilt of her blade, as she turns the rough edge of the grip over beneath her fingertips. It is all she has left to cling to.

“I… I had an older brother. Still have, perhaps. I may not ever know. But we learned to fence together.”

They learned to fence together, beneath hot sun – _in training barracks, along with forty-odd other recruits_ – and Aslatiel knocked her into the sand every single match. At least, come to think of it, his ridiculous gloating kept her alive – out of spite, if nothing else.

Perhaps she has lived longer, for all the matches she lost. Perhaps it taught her to fight better, gave her the drive to finally score a win against him. But she died just the same as he did, in the end – surrounded by others who left her body behind on a sandy battlefield, because she was no longer Lucatiel in their eyes. Just dead weight.

“Was he also a knight?”

She nods. “Most decorated swordsman in all of Mirrah, in his time, actually. I never even compared to him. Didn’t even manage to beat him by the time he-” She flinches, but swallows, trudges on, because at least she hasn’t lost this, too, yet. “I never beat him. Not even once. And then he was gone.”

The other woman watches patiently as she continues to speak, and she nearly loves her for it, for the fact that there are twice the chances someone remembers this conversation. “Lost without a trace,” she says. “The others wouldn’t speak of what had happened. He failed to return from the battle as either a soldier or a corpse. When the knights whose duty it was to recover the bodies from the battle searched later, they couldn’t even find a blade. And then… when I…”

“Ah,” the woman says, nodding. “The… sloppy swordsmanship?”

“Yes,” Lucatiel says, “After that happened, now I’m certain. He was taken by the curse, I’m positive of it – it’s the only thing that could have explained the looks on his battalion’s faces. Like they saw a ghost,” she murmurs, and the other knight slowly nods, as if she could possibly understand that as well.

Yet, one look at her face, drained of color in what seems like a near instant, puts those doubts aside. Her eyes have that far-off look Lucatiel’s certain her own hold, half the time.

“He must have come here, too,” she continues, “but I fear I may lose him a second time, soon.”

Her fellow knight does not meet her gaze. “Will a corpse,” she asks, tentative and mournful, “grant you closure?”

“No,” Lucatiel says, firmly, “but at least I’ll be able to die with no regrets.”

***

The cursebearer – _Ahlai_ , she says, before the word slips her mind but an hour after they’ve parted ways – died with far too many of them. She served and loved a lady, and gladly would have died for her sake under most other circumstances.

Like some old child’s story, another sought her lady’s hand. Satisfied not with rejection or propriety, he pressed the suit.

Foolish and proud and far too trusting in the decency of man, she threw the gauntlet at his feet for her lady’s sake. After all, though nobles playact at war, she knew that beyond a doubt she could beat him in a straight duel.

He knew this too, and had no interest in public dishonor.

Well, public dishonor in the form of loss of pride, loss of image and right to act as one wishes, a freedom she’d never been afforded. He cared not for dishonor in the form of _sportsmanship._

His blade was coated with a northern toxin native to the Great Swamp. It only took a scratch.

He had no chance to enjoy his new loss of honor, however, nor the joys he forsook any inkling of a principle for, for she was to lose hers twice over. He found death upon his own blade when she rose and jammed it right through the bastard.

What can a retinue do against a murderer, when the murderer’s a corpse – bloodied and bleeding and all but unkillable? Nothing – no matter how many civilians shriek, no matter how many swords pierce her skin, for they had nothing to hold against someone – something – with little left to lose.

It is, perhaps, the only time she’s enjoyed killing.

But bloodlust and chaos have their consequences, and she had little left, not naught. Due attention must be paid, else you will stand amidst a circle of cadavers as the flames of wrath die down, and with nothing but a hole in your heart to show for it.

***

Her ankle is bleeding into her sock: the tacky edges of the fabric stick to the wound and the split leather of her right boot alike. The tunnels here are dark and unfamiliar, long winding passageways that lead nowhere, but she knows she’s trying to go somewhere unfamiliar, after all, and she knows it’s important to keep walking, and she knows-

-she knows she’s losing. The struggle to put one wounded foot in front of the other. Her way in the dark. Herself. Her memories. _Everything._

Her head aches, and she’s not sure if it’s because she hit it when she fell down the hole that led to this strange tunnel or if it’s something else altogether. She can’t remember a time where her head didn’t hurt, so perhaps-

Perhaps a moment of reprieve. Could it truly hurt so badly? For a part of her fears what will happen if she stops: that she’ll never get up again, that the horrible noises shaking the stone above, below, all around, will find her in the dark, that she won’t remember where she’s going-

Her hat slips off as the back of her head catches the brim of the unwieldy thing against the stone wall, and the cold air on her scalp makes her shiver. The mask stays. The mask has to stay, or else-

-there is a face in the darkness, a figure clinging to a slow-burning torch. The light is warm, none of that sickly bioluminescence, but the fire feels hot enough to burn a hole in the center of her chest.

But the face is neither of those things.

It is familiar and friendly, dirt-stained and sweaty, with abrasions in places where the person who bears it must have scraped across the stones of this place, but the humanity of it – the kindness of the glance, the recognition within the gaze, the concern in the eyes – reminds her.

Who the woman is – _she’s a knight of Astora, whose name starts with A, like the only other person who matters_ – and where she was going – _to find the other piece of herself, before she loses the rest_ – if only in fragments.

It is easy, after all, to lose one’s self in the darkness.

(But she felt lost in the light, once. Hot sand, the ring of blades on a battlefield. They thought she was just another body, once she fell.)

(She should have been just another body, when she fell.)

It is easier to remember one’s relative position in the world with another element of it to cling to. Like a counterweight, or a walking stick. Something to balance with.

The knight hands her a handkerchief for the blood on her hand, which clutches her heel. It’s already stained with it. “You look lost.”

“I feel it.” She frowns, uncertain of how best to articulate her thoughts, how to take what little fragments she can cling to beyond a moment and make them anything approaching comprehensible to someone who does not swim through them constantly. “My thoughts… are very scattered, I find.”

“You could come with me,” the figure says. “I seek the castle – perhaps he’s there?”

“I.. no.” There’s a reason for it, just on the tip of her tongue, but she knows she cannot say yes, as much as she does not want to be alone again. “Do you ever…”

Do you ever wonder why it was us, Aslatiel? What makes a man take a sword through the gut and rise to strike again in kind?

Is this curse not just death by some other name, death but more slowly? But to feel one’s self die, over and over until one can no longer _feel…_ or is death just worse than we were taught, in those barracks? Not instant. Perpetual. No peaceful darkness, but the harsh light of day, again and again and _again._

What must it have been like to be the first?

There are answers there, she knows, somewhere beyond a horizon she can no longer see.

“…do you ever wonder?” she settles on, eventually.

“Wonder what?”

“What _is_ this curse?”

The knight bites back a grin. “Every moment I yet breathe.”

How have they not… it would simply be easier if they could think properly on it, and she can feel her brow furrow in… frustration? “It rings in my mind constantly, too, but I haven’t the focus to answer it.”

Maybe fear. It could be fear.

“You seek other things,” the knight says, tapping the hilt of Lucatiel’s blade. “Perhaps it’s because that’s my only purpose here.”

“No.”

The word slips out before can think how best to explain the rest – emphatic, forceful – but she _knows_ she must correct the woman.

“I seek only…” she inhales deeply, shuddering, steadying herself. “That is… loss frightens me. Of memory, of self. I want… I must do… you’re correct, I think, but I can’t if I’m lost. So I seek… I can’t. Above all else, I-”

“I won’t see you lost, Lucatiel,” the knight interjects. It is intended to reassure, she is certain, but… something about the sentiment bothers her.

Scares her, more accurately.

She shakes her head, and she knows she must look visibly frustrated by now, she can feel the corners of her eyes tearing over, and it is all to hope the woman does not take her anger to heart as something directed at her. “But you shouldn’t… it… Look. If I were told,” she says, swallowing, because it’s true and there’s no point in denying it, if only so that when time marches on and the other woman suddenly understands, comes to know what it’s like to stand in her own torn-up boots, alone in a pit – _tunnel_ – with no memory of how she got there, she’ll be better prepared instead of left alone without a care or a word of advice or a single _direction_ to seek him out.

“If I were told,” she continues, “that by… killing you, I would be freed of this curse… then I would draw my sword without hesitation.”

It won’t. She knows that. She knows she knows that. Yet she fears forgetting that much, in the end. She’s lost almost everything else – why not that, too?

“I don’t want to die,” she ultimately settles on. “I want to…”

What _does_ she want?

_To not lose._

To not lose to whatever this is, the way she lost everything else.

(He was always better at winning.)

“I want to exist,” she says, because it’s the best way she can explain it. “I would sacrifice anything – _anything_ – at all for this, though it shames me, but,” she swallows, “it is the truth.”

There is no response but for the knight’s gentle nod. A slow movement of the head ( _understanding_?) and a strange sense of melancholy. She helps bind Lucatiel’s ankle, pressing crushed golden crystals into the skin around the wound before tying it off with some spare scrap of linen.

The leather will never recover, she thinks. She cannot recall how to mend a gash that big.

The knight must be thinking similarly, running her fingers along the split edges of the broken boot, gauging the damage.

“Do you…” Lucatiel starts, but trails off as she reaches for the boot, brushing, instead, the skin of the other woman’s hand with the edge of her own.

She should move it, presumably. She should pull the boot back towards her from where it sits, attempt to return it to its proper place. But she does not want to do so.

A strange part of her wants, once again, to simply stop. To rest, here, in this dimly lit tunnel. To let the last thing she experiences be the brush of skin against her own. To curl up in the warmth of another person until she ceases to be one.

“Do I what?” the woman asks, still patient, but curious. She should move, a part of her knows that, but the woman does not pull away either – instead gently shifting until Lucatiel’s bloody hand is half-covered by her own, as she slowly traces the outline of each finger like she’s doing her utmost to commit the shapes to memory.

Something cracks deep inside her, at that.

“Sometimes,” Lucatiel continues, “I feel obsessed.”

Very little of her own thoughts are still tangible to her, after all, and such matters overwhelmingly dominate what pieces she can make sense of.

“…with… this insignificant thing called ‘self.’ But, even so, I am compelled,” she says, in what feels like one part a plea and another a justification, “to preserve it. But how can I…”

How can she not? But how does one express such a feeling, to one to whom it’s as foreign as the land they’ve been wandering, the stones beneath their feet?

“Am I – can I be – wrong to feel so? Surely you’d do the same, in my shoes?”

“I cannot know until… unless, that is… I hope, for both our sakes, you never learn the answer to that.”

“…maybe,” she finds herself muttering, “we’re all cursed… from the moment we’re born.”

***

She does not know how long she’s been sitting here, in the dark, before she remembers she needs to keep going.

Her boot’s torn, and it feels, after much searching her thoughts for what she can put together into something comprehensible, like she lost something.

But she has her blade, her armor, her mask. Shield, even. There’s- oh. Her fingers are clutching a handkerchief that she knows didn’t belong to her, so perhaps she gained something instead. Did she-

-the woman said she could keep it. The knight.

It’s old and stained, but the edges are embroidered with little golden leaves. It’s very fancy, for something owned by a knight so run-down.

She wonders where the woman got it.

***

There’s a broken-down shack amidst the fog of what looks like a courtyard, and that’s good a place to rest as any.

Scrapes in the dirt. Broken planks. Scrap of… some kind of fabric.

Old signs of life. Someone lived here once.

Did she live here, once?

It’s hard to be sure. Could be yes, could be no, but she’s not sure of much, to be honest. She’s not even sure who she is, these days.

She was someone, she thinks. She must have been.

There’s a sword on her hip, and though she’s not sure of much, she knows a piece of her still knows – still remembers – how to use it, because her fingers reflexively reach for it when an animal growls off in the distance.

It’s a well-made blade, handle wrapped in worn, soft leather that’s fraying in a couple places at the edges of the grip. The blade has been well maintained, with a tiny message inscribed into it.

“ _Together till the end_.” There’s a name carved into it, too, on the other side, just above the cross-guard. “ _Lucatiel_.”

That’s her, she knows, distantly, but the moment she turns her eyes from the blade she cannot even remember the first letter. Something about that slip of memory makes her blood run cold, and she scrambles for the sword again, for fear of losing it altogether.

She’s dimly aware of the mask slipping loose, but she cannot bring herself to care, for such a mask seems pointless – another vestige of something lost and meaningless, perhaps. It hits the dirt with a dull, empty sound.

This is how the other woman finds her: crouched in the dirt, against a half-broken wall, dead eyes firmly trained on the only thing she still has left.

She doesn’t recognize the face, but she knows she should, that she knows them. They were searching, she thinks, like _she_ is, for something she’s forgotten.

The other woman hasn’t forgotten – she can tell by the pain in her eyes as she looks upon-

_-Lucatiel, my name is Lucatiel-_

-she hasn’t forgotten: not her purpose nor the face before her. She knows this to be true, for there’s sympathy and fear there, in her eyes; her expression is laced with everything but pity, and perhaps it will be all right, in the end, then.

Perhaps it will be all right if Lucatiel forgets, because she won’t be forgotten. Not just yet. Not if this woman yet remembers.

_While,_ a voice hums in her ear, like something horrible, like family. _While she remembers._

There was another name, she distantly thinks – another name before hers. She was supposed to remember, but the more she scrambles for it the more she wants to sob for lack of it.

Maybe, she thinks, staring at the blade, it was Lucatiel.

_(No, the sword is hers, she’s Lucatiel, she knows this, and the sword is hers, but why is there supposed to be a second one?_ )

She finds her voice at last, absent-mindedly asks the woman who she is, but the moment the words leave her lips she regrets them, begs her forgiveness, because she _knows_ her, of course she does.

Conversation. Courtesy. She wants the woman to like her, to want to remember. She asks of the journey, knowing the answer will float meaninglessly out of a mouth and into a straining ear, but no amount of expended effort will stop it from dispersing into nothingness. Tones are easier to cling to than syllables. Perhaps it’s harder to forget when it’s before her eyes as a reminder. The dark circles, the stray strands of hair yet to be tidied away, and the way the other knight’s expression hangs heavy on her face all make it harder to forget how tired she sounds.

But, even still, she wants the woman to avoid whatever is happening to her – to all of them – so she’s earnest in her prayer for her safety.

Words hover in the air, lingering like the wisps of light that dance through the thick fog that surrounds the shack they sit in. Hands reach for a sculpted metal face in the dirt, and distantly, Lucatiel knows it was hers.

Calloused fingers trace the open eyes of the mask, run gently along the edges of the nose. It’s confusing, the care in the gesture.

“May I?” the woman asks, a hand outstretched.

May she what? There are tears in the corner of the knight’s eyes, but the woman blinks them back when she catches her staring, but she shouldn’t-

-shouldn’t, what? Cry? That can’t be correct, for she can feel her own cheeks burn with something painful.

She nods, trying to figure out how to ask _why,_ why it burns, why the woman cannot keep tears from her eyes as well, why she cares, so.

Why both of them do.

A gentle hand traces her bare cheek along the edge of the patch of broken skin, slowly running cold fingers down to her jawline and back up again, past her ear, brushing the hollow of her bad eye-

-it’s overwhelming with something massive and painful, overwhelmingly _tender_ in a way that utterly terrifies her, and she’s suddenly engulfed by with a heady wave of grief, for she cannot, she _cannot_ forget, she needs-

-she needs to make sure the other woman remembers, because in that moment, her name slips from her lips once more beneath it all, and how could she ever hope to remember?

“ _Lucatiel,_ ” she blurts out, “ _My name is Lucatiel.”_

It’s inevitable.

_“I beg of you,_ ” she pleads, a hand gripping the woman’s wrist tightly, because it’s all she can cling to, “ _I beg of you, remember my name, for I may not myself.”_

Someone used to sit with her, once, she knows. They lay their head upon their shoulder, and she can just recall the weight of it, warm and heavy, as she ran her fingers through their hair. It was all she had, and now she’s lost it a second time.

She presses lips to the hand. Warm, like the damp feeling on her cheeks.

The woman will not take her blade in the end, despite her offer, despite her plea (for she might need it to remember, as her name is etched upon it), but she keeps the mask at least.

She leaves Lucatiel to the fire at her bidding, begrudgingly trudging out into the fog, into the unknown, and Lucatiel-

“ _Another piece lost_ ,” she thinks, “ _one I didn’t realize I still had._ ”

***

The stone floor of the hallway is cold enough to chill her through her boots. There are no fires in the sconces, just the dim light of the outdoors filtered through fog and dust alike to a pale, dull gray.

Her hands are gloved, she cannot feel, but still she reaches for the barely-illuminated motes, drifting before her face.

Intangible.

Here, in this place, it is silent. It is not peaceful, but neither is it terrifying. There is a sympathy to the silence, like something just beyond her reach watches her take one step, another, in this forlorn hall.

Metal against metal. The gentle patter of leather boots against stone.

She does not know much, but she knows the sound of a blade unsheathing when she hears it. _Sees_ it.

She knows she once knew the face that wields it – pointed, sharp, grey eyes burning with something visceral. She does not know how she knows it, or why. But, perhaps this is because she does not bother to think about it, because all she can cling to in that moment, as that face stands before her, brandishing a blade, is a single note of despair, because how could she _possibly_ hope to win against this?

( _The curse. The man. Both, neither._ )

(A piece of her remembers, and knows – you will _lose._ )

But another piece – perhaps the only one left – _remembers_ , catches a fragment of something right at the end of a blade, and she can just taste his name on her tongue along with the blood of the last piece of herself being torn from her, and the rest is silence.

The beginning full seldom matches the end.

***

And so, they met, one desperately seeking, the other incensed-

-at what? Her audacity to follow? That he’d have to reckon with his crimes now, that the victim’s blood is his? That she, too, was denied a peaceful death, in the end?

(Or did he mark a rotting face dressed in familiar armor and rail at the notion of a wandering thief looting his sister’s corpse?)

***

She claims the bloodied blade in the end, and finally comes to understand what it’s like to fear forgetting.

***

The flame flickers in the fog. In the fog? No. The _sleet_.

Distantly, she knows she has never seen the way water falls from the sky like this, in thick sheets on winds that blow with such strength that it almost seems to rush by horizontally, instead of from above.

It does not feel like rain, but this is simply because it does not feel like much of anything.

She blows into this strange place like the sleet that overwhelms it – unpredictably, abruptly, and uncontrollably drifting.

She’ll be gone just as soon. Sooner, perhaps. The sleet seems endless here, and she is without beginning.

Or body.

There is a body, here, for she can sense it, the soul within. Something solid, someone human.

They sit on the steps of a cathedral, white frost-coated marble, staring into the storm, clutching a piece of sculpted metal. Twisted, oxidized copper, shedding a deep, turquoise rust where the figure’s fingers meet the jagged edges.

To shed such a curse like flakes of ancient metal, _imagine_ , how many souls-

She had one, once. A soul. A body that was not a fleeting form.

Broken, charred pauldrons. Worn blue tabard, torn and repaired many times over, minus a spot where they’ve undoubtedly ripped off part of the hem. The gold embroidery of the crest is the only thing that catches what little light breaks through the cloud cover. It is something beautiful, something deeply unsettling, like somebody has again wrenched something inexplicable from her shadow.

The figure turns and stares, and she should reach for the phantom blade at her back, but-

-but they clasp a hand over their lips, staring. A sharp intake of breath lingers in the air. A tear, halfway down a cheek, freezes in the storm.

The figure rises, holds a hand out, and she grips the spectral hilt, but something snaps. Whatever it is, it’s as nebulous as she is. She’s not certain why she hesitates, and perhaps she never will be, and perhaps it will be her undoing ( _again, again, like always_ ), but-

A leather glove brushes the ill-defined outline of her cheek, hand unsteady and uncertain, but there is nothing to feel, no strange lines to trace, no flesh beneath her fingertips. Fingers part from the phantom face, and the figure-

-the figure smiles, a terrible and broken and deeply, deeply _joyful_ smile, and it makes certainly no sense, for such a creature to take pity on something like her, to delight in being haunted by such a specter, to recognize a soulless thing, Forlorn and forgotten.

It is the closest she’s ever come to feeling something.

But-

-but she _does,_ cold and bitterly frozen, for one unused to ice and frost, attuned to hot breezes and sandy dunes and the overwhelming warmth of the sun. It runs through her like ice poured directly into her bones, from the crown of her head down the column of her spine, through her limbs until the cold has taken root in each fingertip.

The sleet does not feel like rain, what little of it has graced her skin. It feels like frozen metal haloing her head, burning gently like the softness of a hex. Like worn leather cradling her face, the smooth rub of it against a cheek.

Like coarsely woven fabric, bunched damp and bloody between her hands as she grips the back of the tabard. Like heated skin pressed into the crook of her shoulder, the sharp point of a chin digging in, the damp cheeks, the pressure of arms wrapped tightly around her torso.

The burn of some ancient crown.

And then it is gone all-too quickly, as the woman – _Ahlai_ , her name was Ahlai, how could she forget? How could she _remember_? – releases her, scrambling for her pack, and pulls out a blade, and she flinches, because she has had enough of swords, enough of blades, enough of blood and bodies to last three lifetimes.

But her knight presses the hilt of it to her chest, the pommel digs in where the sleet has left her armor damp, and says, “there’s for you. That’s remembrance.”

There’s a name engraved upon the hilt of the blade, but she doesn’t need to look.

She knows it’s Lucatiel.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) There's a lot of speculation on Mirrah. Some think it built on the ruins of Vinheim (I tend to fall elsewhere, given Vinheim returns in DS3), due to the spell crossover. It has substantial ties to the Sunless/Sunset Realms, as Sirris and Hodrick carry Mirrah-linked objects that are then attributed to the Realms (which could make it easily former Anor Londo), as well as the vertebrae shackle/Lucatiel's Mask trade. I ended up going with a desert setting due to a couple factors. Lucatiel wears light armor (and so does Sirris, later) that still maintains proper coverage, the Holy Water Urn references the protected nature of Mirrhan water sources, and it very likely borders Jugo (and possibly Forossa), which *is* a desert. I feel like Creighton's armor being heavy doesn't change things, as we know he's unreliable and a liar, and it's possible the armor was stolen.
> 
> 2) Yeah, I know Aldia was long dead by the time Aslatiel (presumably) kills Lucatiel, but indulge me in my Forlorn fix-it. His sorcerers still live, in their horrible little gargoyle room, so why should their work cease when mister war crimes turns himself into a giant flaming head?
> 
> 3) Title from Hamlet: 5.1.225, where Laertes pleads with the gravediggers to hold off on burying his sister, after inadvertently cursing out the man whose schemes he's unwittingly assisted, specifically for depriving his sister of her mind. Good play, good scene, peak Lucatiel, particularly given the idea that burying Ophelia properly is disrespectful to the 'normal' dead who died peacefully, with their soul intact.
> 
> (Someday I'll shut tf up about titles, but that day is not today)
> 
> 4) I've got a bunch of other short one-shots in the works, COVID just set me back a bit, because *of course* I got it. Thankfully, I'm slowly improving now.


End file.
